


Back to the Past

by grandfatherclock



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 15:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: John keeps coming to Zatanna with his problems, and she's frankly sick of it.





	Back to the Past

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so, I rewrote like half of this story and added like 2000 words. Sorry for the inconvenience!
> 
> Also added like 50% more Hamlet references. The themes of that play, like action versus inaction, spirituality, the impossibility of certainty,,, really fucked me up.
> 
> And it is only labelled 'mature' because there are references to sex and I'm playing safe lol.

"Zee," John said, leaning against the back of the cushioned chair he was sitting on. He'd been waiting nearly fifteen minutes in her dressing room, and had already tried and failed to convince the bodyguard glaring at him to allow him to light a cigarette. The fact that he listened, even though he didn't want to sleep with the man, was proof of how fucked up he was feeling. "I've got a problem."

Zatanna grinned, wiping her makeup off her face with a wet cloth in one hand. She was sitting facing away from him, but John could make out every perfection from the mirror. Her inky hair framed her face beautifully, smooth with the smallest hint of curls near the ends. Her top hat sat beside her on the table, and the front of her white shirt was slightly unbuttoned. She was lovely. "Oh, good," Zatanna said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. "John has a problem."

Another night, he would've teased her, flirted, gotten a bigger reaction. But tonight was not another night, no matter how much John wished otherwise. "Zee, love," John said, his voice rough. He cleared his throat, embarrassed but refusing to acknowledge it.

Zatanna raised an eyebrow. She finally swivelled around in her chair, and flicked her eyes to her bodyguard. "Lenny," she said, "would you give us some privacy?" She then looked back at him, never blinking all the while. Zatanna had quirks like that; after all, she was a _real_ magician, and being a Zatara meant carrying certain burdens.

John remembered, once, when he would've held her tight in his arms, kissed her hard and fast, throwing them both on the sheets of her four-poster bed, and fucking her. Making her so happy she'd float.

Zatanna's lips, a dark red, stop smiling, as if she could tell what he was thinking. "Why, John," she said, her voice unable to hide an undercurrent of strain, "you look as if you broke someone's heart." The light flickered against her brown skin unexpectedly, as if the very heart of God had skipped a beat.

John grinned, something hard and brittle. He'd always been rubbish at reducing his own harm. "You'll bloody well find out, love," he said, like it was a challenge, like he was a child, "if you take the time to listen."

Zatanna's long lashes took deliberately blinked. She did it so rarely that John found himself engrossed with her dark brown eyes, and the impenetrability of them. He supposed that was the purpose of the gesture, to show him she could play him like a fiddle. He couldn't bring himself to care, though. Not when she was looking at him like that.

Zatanna got up, slow and deliberate. She kicked off her high heels as she walked, and moved past him to the red couch on the side of the room. She lowered herself down then, every move calculated. She was only ever like this with him, John knew, but it was more than bloody well deserved.

"Tell me, John," Zatanna said, her eyes dark. "And don't you leave anything out."

John gave her an ugly smile. It truly amazed him, how he could contort his face just right to hurt someone. The roll of his eyes. The biting of his lips. "I suppose it started with a demon, then."

(-)

Gary Green was John's problem.

If he had to distill it down to three words, his problem was Gary fucking Green.

Ava groaned. "Are you serious?" She tapped her clipped fingers against her fancy desk, and then pushed herself back against her large black chair. After possibly a minute of just watching them with a horrified look in her eyes, she said, a little mildly, "Oh, man."

Gary grinned nervously beside him. "He's truly our best choice for dealing with this anachronism, Av─Miss"─he caught himself─" _Director_ Sharpe." He scratched the back of his head, his voice a little sheepish. "Sorry, everything is changing so fast." He looked at John from the corner of his eyes, his lips curving into a gentle smile.

John wanted to kiss him. Perhaps that was why he hadn't cut through Ava's silence with a lewd joke. He'd been thinking of Gary's lips.

He blinked. Ava and Gary's conversation came back into focus, Ava exasperated and Gary excited. But Ava's eyes flickered slightly from John to him and then with a bemused smile warned them not to screw up.

John grinned at her, told her something about how he only ever screwed up, never screwed down.

The winkle of her nose, the blinking of her eyes before her familiar look of disgust came back─it was welcome. He was already in hot water with Gary. If he learned to somehow care about Ava Sharpe, it might break his cold little heart.

Gary tried to hid his smile, and failed miserably.

It was adorable. John wanted to kiss him.

(-)

Zatanna snapped her fingers, and John realized he'd trailed off. He cleared his throat, not sure exactly what he was feeling. "Anyway," he said, roughly.

"Do you have crush, John?" Zatanna asked, her voice impossibly light. Impossible was right. She hadn't moved since he started the story, and there was something hard, almost rigid, in the set of her jaw.

He didn't know how to feel about the fact that Zatanna still loved him. She was an amazing woman, a true soldier, any Zatara was, but she was something special. When they'd first met, she'd taken a long time to trust him, love him. And though there was nothing stupid about her, it had been highly stupid to do so.

Because Zatanna Zatara didn't know how to fall out of love with someone. She carried her hurt wherever she went. She protected her heart, but when it fell, it fell for life. She trusted her desires too much, she always had. And though he loved her for it, he also kind of hated that about her.

John knew how to fall out of love. He wouldn't have been able to live otherwise. But perhaps he resented her bravery, her refusal to let the past die. He felt strings wherever he went, reminding him of the times he'd allowed others to lose everything.

She made him feel cowardly. That was it.

Even now, as she refused to be embarrassed of their time together with the straightness of her back, as she met his eyes and expressed fully and completely what he meant to her with a blink of her eyes, he felt cowardly.

He felt cowardly, telling the story of another man who John probably made hate himself right now.

(-)

Gary grinned. "Nice going, John." Admiration was thick in his voice. He reset his glasses on his face nervously. "This is the second demon I've seen you exorcise."

"It was nothing, love," John said, dusting the dirt off his trench coat. It really had been nothing, just a stubborn time-travelling poltergeist with a flair for drama. He'd been able to trick it, distract it─after all, who knew people got upset when you start smoking weed in their ancestral homes? It had taken less than an hour.

Yet here he was, a smile on his face and his shoulders slumped with relaxation in a way they hadn't been for a long time. Looking at the man beside him, whose lips were stretched into a wistful smile.

"I love ghost stories," Gary said, suddenly. He peered at John self-consciously, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

John raised an eyebrow as he tossed his used cigarette to the smooth wooden floor and crumpled it under his shoe. "Do you, mate?" He stepped closer to Gary, teasing, testing. He decided to try the truth for a change. "I hate them."

Gary stood, and for a second there, a perfect second, he did not move. They stood close, not exactly touching, but not _not_ touching either. Finally, Gary, with a tremor in his voice, muttered, "Fear it."

It was self-directed. A moment of weakness, introspection. But John found himself answering, "I do."

They stayed there like that for a second, neither trusting their voices not to betray them. John finally moved away, and searched for another cigarette in the pockets of his trench coat. "Gotta go, love," he said, his voice almost bored. "Another client. You know it is."

Gary blinked several times, as if pulling himself out of a spell. "Oh, um. Yeah." He smiled to himself then. "John Constantine, the very beacon of professionalism."

John grinned. "Exactly."

Gary waved halfheartedly. There was something in his eyes that John wasn't sure he wanted to investigate further. It wasn't exactly happiness.

Maybe hope.

He didn't trust it. He left with the swish of his coat, not bothering to close the door behind him. He'd always been a careless man.

(-)

John grimaced. He knew this would happen. Zatanna made him reveal his secrets to himself, made him honest. In a way he'd hoped this would happen. In a way he'd hoped it wouldn't.

For better or for worse, it had.

Zatanna was looking at him with something close to sympathy, and he wanted to say something shitty, something unforgivable so he'd never have to kill that hope again. "John," she said, pushing her impossibly black hair behind her shoulder. "He's adorable." Her eyes were careful. "But please don't tell me the problem is that he likes you." But even as she said that, there was an exhaustion in her voice that only came from absolute certainty.

His momentary silence spoke volumes.

(-)

Ever since that particular mission, the seeds had been planted. Gary had been acting strange around him for weeks, nervous, wringing his hands, slightly pink when John teased him, but when John saw the particular set of Gary's mouth, the wrinkling of his brow, he knew that today their tension would be resolved, whether it be the outcome Gary desired or not.

Gary had shaken him awake from his mid-day nap. John had been sleeping on the leather couch in the library of the Waverider, and wasn't sure how he'd gotten there nor who threw a soft fuzzy red blanket over him. He was grateful, he supposed. Staying at the Waverider entailed an acceptance that certain boundaries would be crossed, and that he would be forced to rely on stupidly earnest honest-to-god heroes. He was learning to be okay with that.

It hadn't been like he hadn't trusted people before. But when he'd gotten the flu, four different people had dragged him to the med-bay. Nate had thought he was dying and offered to make out with him for moral support. Ray had started preparing a eulogy. Stein kept questioning Gideon's diagnostics. It had been extremely jarring.

So when he'd realized it was just Gary, he actually relaxed, despite the tension between the two of them. "Oh, thank god."

Gary bit his lip to stop himself from smiling. He looked beautiful in the gentle glow from the light in the library. "Sara told me you're having a hard time... adjusting." He scratched the back of his head. "You got the flu two weeks ago?" He paused, and winced. "That's cool."

John tilted his head at him, and smiled. "Mate, you have no idea. I actually think they _worsened_ the symptoms. But I'm all good now." He winked, and then wondered what the fuck he was doing.

There was an awkward pause. Then, Gary blurted out, "I need a favor."

John rubbed the bleariness out of his eyes. "Mate, I guarantee unless you need something very specifically in my skill set I will make it worse."

Gary sat down on the chair next to the couch he was laying on. "I need someone to do magic," he said, his tone conspiratorial, "for my Dungeons & Dragon campaign." His brown eyes were sparkling. "Remember?" His leg was bouncing with energy despite his feigned casualness. "I'd mentioned it a couple days ago."

John vaguely remembered something about his fantasy game. He'd been having a harder time paying attention to Gary lately, though. All he wanted to do was kiss the man, and then do something more.

"John?" Gary asked, uncertain.

Fuck. It happened again. Damn it, John thought mournfully. Damn it all to hell. "Did you wake me up from my essential four hour nap," John said, half-joking and half-something else, "so that I could perform party tricks?"

Gary stayed silent, but his eagerness was obvious. "I understand if you have prior commitments," he said half-heartedly, with his eyes begging him to agree.

"Why?" John demanded, genuinely curious, sitting up. "Why is this so important to you?" He winced from his stiff joints.

Gary rolled his eyes, like John was being the ridiculous one. "I need to spice up my campaign," he said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," John echoed, bemused. He ran his hand through his hair, and then massaged his temple. "Why not get Zari to scare your mates and blow out your candles?" he said, grinning. "She loves that nerd stuff. She's always playing fantasy games."

Gary turned a little pink, and stared down at his hands, as he muttered, "Because you're amazing."

(-)

John could've heard a pin drop.

Finally, Zatanna said, mildly, "Oh."

John nodded, leaning back against his soft cushioned chair in exhaustion. He left like a different person from when he'd first started telling this story. "Exactly."

Zatanna leaned forward, biting her lip. "And how'd you react?" she demanded, tilting her face slightly. Her hair rippled over her shoulder. The concern, and pain in her voice─John didn't deserve it, but he found himself accepting her silent comfort.

He shrugged. "I think I handled it pretty well," he said.

(-)

John shot up. He didn't mean to. He'd planned to raise an eyebrow, to laugh Gary's remark off. But his voice, stupidly, was raw and unpolished. "Gary─" He stopped himself, not trusting himself to finish that sentence rationally.

Gary looked up from staring at his hands, and looked surprised and a little hurt. His skin seemed to glow from the gentle warm light. "John─" he said uncertainly.

"Mate─" John said, struggling to articulate himself in a way that made sense. He wanted to scream, plead, calmly explain the numerous reasons why Gary shouldn't─indeed, _couldn't_ ─look at him like that, like he hung the moon, like he painted the stars into the sky.

Of course, John could take compliments. He knew he was talented, and conniving, and an expert con man. But to see Gary's gentle brown eyes, shining with easy grace, and his lips, which John found himself more and more frequently thinking about, opening to give him credit so _easily_ , so _effortlessly_ , like it cost him _nothing_ ─

Well, it was more than he could bear.

John looked with dismay at his shaking arms that were propping him up on the couch. "I've─I─" He felt like a kid again, his school teacher with her hard eyes instructing him to enunciate his words, Cheryl holding his hand and telling him t─to─ _just breathe, John_.

Gary got up off the chair, and reached for him, and John just─he just─

Froze.

Gary also froze, his fingers hanging in the air in front of John's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. He waited a second longer, a second more after that, perhaps hoping some divine interference would spring John into action, turn him into the romantic hero of Gary's dreams.

Then he pulled away, and retracted his fingers. "I'll go," he said, tapping his time courier and inserting a code. _6-2-5-5-6-7_. Even a mess, John knew how to hurt people as easily as he breathed.

And yes, that included himself.

John didn't say anything as Gary left for the building of the Time Bureau, nor when Gary froze for a second before ending the transmission, despite the fact that he desperately wanted Gary to stay.

See?

(-)

John scoffed. "Stupid, right?" He gave her a disaffected smile. There was a warning in his question, or perhaps a pleading. _Please. Please tell me this is stupid._

Zatanna's eyes were impenetrable. After an unbearable silence, she said casually, "We're going to do this again, aren't we?" She leaned back into the cushions of her couch, relaxing into the softness. "This same damn conversation."

John gave her an icy smile. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, Zee." He searched the pockets of his trench coat for a cigarette, and forced his fingers not to shake.

Zatanna smiled to herself. "Of course you don't. Always so damn perceptive, except when it comes to yourself." She pulled the curtain of her long dark hair behind her shoulders, and gave him a bemused look. The warm orange light reflected beautifully on her skin. "Constantine, you keep coming back to me to remind yourself of what a piece of shit you are."

John blinked. And then he laughed, a hoarse, ugly sound. "Love, if I needed to do that, I wouldn't have to come to you." He leaned into his chair uneasily, listening to the creaks and trembling of the physical world and wincing.

Zatanna played with a strand of her inky hair. "No, you do." Her tone was detached, as if she was reading a transcript. "I'm one of the few people you've hurt that have made it out alive. So you come to me to hurt yourself."

John opened his mouth, but found that he was at a loss for words. This had been happening more and more often, he'd noticed. His nether thoughts no longer seemed to align with the physicality of his body. He wanted to do so many things, to kiss Gary, to untangle his relationship with Zatanna, but his body remained still, a statue, against the ambiguity of time.

"John Constantine, speechless?" Zatanna said, her eyes glittering. Her mouth was set in a hard way, her jaw clenched. Bracing herself. "I'm honoured. But I'm not going to tell you that you don't deserve what you want, because I deserve better." After a pause, she said reluctantly, with great cost to herself, "We both do."

John tightened his fingers into fists, wanting to hurt someone. Hurt himself. Break something in a million different ways, to fix the splintered relationship before him. But what Zatanna needed from him was reflection, and healing. And it was easier to break something than to fix it. "I betrayed you," he said, his voice rough. "I've sold you out."

"I know." Zatanna said, perhaps too quickly. She blinked something away, perhaps tears. "But I'm done." She got up with deliberate casualness, and snapping her fingers. Her fur coat flew to her, and draped itself on her outstretched arm.

She nodded curtly at him. "It's been a pleasure, John," she said, her voice tired, with an undercurrent of faint satisfaction. She moved to leave.

Before she could, he asked quietly, "Are you done with me?"

Zatanna froze, and then leaned against the doorway, her eyes unfathomable. "Done being your punisher. Done being your enabler. Done being your excuse." She smiled to herself, for herself. "I'm setting us free. When you're ready to be friends, you can find me."

He stared at the doorway long after she left. He couldn't quite understand what it was, but it felt eerily close to redemption. "Fuck," he finally said, lighting his cigarette.

(-)

After perhaps an hour of deliberation in Zatanna's dressing room, John forced himself to use a rune, to find himself waiting outside the door to Gary's apartment.

He entertained the thought of leaving, of running, of never seeing Gary's face again. Of going to the closest bar he could find and seducing a beautiful stranger. Someone who wouldn't challenge him, who wouldn't need him, who wouldn't make him a better man. Who didn't _care_ if he was a better man.

Then he brought his fist to the door and knocked.

When Gary opened the door, he had an astonished look on his face

John presented himself with a cool and detached smile. "Hey," he said, more softly than he'd intended. His lips curved into an involuntary smile.

Gary smiled back at him nervously. His eyes were shining. "Hey," he whispered back.

John resisted the urge to kiss him immediately. He'd had time to get used to it, after all. "I heard you needed to spice up your campaign," he said, smirking. "A real jackass told me that you'd asked him, but he chickened out. So I came."

Gary reset his glasses on his face, trying not to beam. "Maybe the jackass had things going on," he said. Shyly, he added, "Things he can tell me, if he wants to."

John blinked, and then cleared his throat. "I think he'd like that." His voice was rawer than he'd hoped. "But right now, I've got a show to put on."

(-)

"Holy shit!" Darryl said, when the candles started to float in the air. He stared at Gary in shock. "Oh my god. Please tell me you're a special effects person in your real job and you're just fucking with us, Gary."

"For fuck's sake, Darryl," Lottie snapped. "It's just fucking floating candles. I'm sure my fucking mother, who doesn't know what Google is, could pull this off. All you need is, like, candles and strings and shit."

"I don't know," Gary said, unable to control the smile on his face. "Seems a little spooky to me."

Was John really sitting with Gary's geeky friends, watching them play Dungeons & Dragons and doing cheap tricks on their behalf?

Abso- _fucking_ -lutely. Especially when it brought such a big smile to Gary's face.

John made a sign behind his back, and the lights suddenly went out.

"Fuck," Darryl said, faintly.

"He planned this," another person whose name he couldn't remember said timidly. "He kept grinning like a dork and saying that he had a surprise for us last week."

John shook his head, smiling. Of course Gary couldn't help himself. That meant he'd have to try something a little more complex, then. He whispered an incantation under his breath, which caused all the windows and doors in the apartment to be forced open, and then repeatedly open and close, again and again.

"I don't know about that love," John said, letting his voice become darker and nastier. "There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt in your philosophy."

Just then, there was a loud banging noise.

Darryl shot up. "I'm out," he announced, picking up his bag and leaving for the door.

Lottie scoffed as he passed her. "Wimp," she said. Of course, her skin was white and she was sitting up rigidly, watching every passing shadow with fear and suspicion.

John decided to have some more fun after that. Gary kept trying to continue his game, but John kept interrupting him with the sounds of giggling children, screaming women and smashing glasses. After about twenty minutes, Lottie, the last of them, finally sat up and glowered. "I'm leaving, okay?" she said. "Not because of the screaming. Because I got shit to do."

"Of course," Gary said graciously.

She picked her stuff, and as she left, glowered at both him and Gary. "I'll figure it out," she promised. She walked with deceptive calmness out of Gary's living room, and when she was out of their sight, walked with a quicker pace.

When she finally left, the lights turned on, the windows and doors closed and the noises subsided. John winked at Gary. "Not my best work," he admitted. "Not enough time for anything truly horrifying─"

Gary pulled him by his tie into a kiss.

John wrapped his arms around him in delight, deepening the kiss. Oh god, he thought in the back of his head. You're acting like you're sixteen. But he couldn't stop himself from grinning.

Gary pulled away suddenly, his eyes determined. "You quoted Shakespeare," he said, awe in his voice.

John suddenly felt self-conscious. "Fit the atmosphere, you know?" he said, attempting aloofness.

Gary raised an eyebrow.

John was suddenly struck by how much he looked like Zatanna in that instant. Lovely, gentle, completely unwilling to put up with his bullshit. Something he needed a hell of a lot more of. "I know you like Hamlet," he said.

"What would I know of a tragic hero who is characterized by his inaction?" Gary asked, gently. "Who wishes for intervention to tell him right from wrong, to police his desires?"

John's eyes flicked from Gary's lips to his eyes. "I think I figured myself out," John said. "Not completely, but enough."  He felt awkward, uncertain. Sure, he knew how to seduce, but sitting in a chair with a kind man sitting on his lap? His eyes looking at him with wonder, like he was a fucking hero? It was alien to him.

"Show me your magic," Gary said, his hand stroking the back of John's hair.

John held out the arm not wrapped around Gary and created a soft flicker in his hand. The light from the fire cascaded brilliantly on Gary's face.

He watched the flame burn with wide eyes. "Incredible," he whispered.

John smiled. "This was important, wasn't it?" he said. "Tonight was important."

Gary looked at him like he was the entire world. "Yes, John," he said, his voice soft. "Tonight was important."

John kissed Gary, or maybe Gary kissed him. It didn't really matter. John could feel himself descending, embracing the uncertainty of truth, and of desire, and of _life_ , frankly, and could feel himself learning to be okay with that.

And it was fucking beautiful.

(-)

He left a letter for Zatanna, telling her what he didn't dare vocalize.

How sorry he was, and how grateful. How he was ready to be there for her, if she needed him. How he loved her. How he could've loved her, in another time and another place. Gave her a number she can call.

She held it close to her, sometimes.

And dialed his number.


End file.
